11/11/2015copyright james d. johnston 20041 a lightning tutorial on spatial hearing james d....

04/20/23 Copyright James D. Johnston 2004 1

A Lightning Tutorial on

Spatial HearingJames D. Johnston

Neural Audio

Kirkland, Wa, USA


The Origins of Audio

Audio, in the way we use it here, is the technology, science,and art of recording or creating something to be played backvia transducers to the human auditory system. The musicalissues are not included, and indeed warrant a separate and

serious discussion by an expert in the subject.

There have been several varieties of recording and/or transmission

methods, starting with none, i.e.:Live Performance

Acoustic Recording of Live PerformanceElectronic Recording of Complete Performance

Studio Recording of Individual SessionsDirect Synthesis of Music


What do we hear in each of these formats or methods?

In the original venue, we hear whatever parts ofthe soundfield are present where we sit. As we move,

turn our heads, move our heads, and focus our attention,

we can learn a great deal about the concert hall, theperformers, and everything else perceptible from the

seat we are sitting in.

No method of recording to the present provides us withanything near this experience.


WHAT DID I JUST SAY?Well, it’s not all bad news. There are things that both olderand newer recording methods do very well. What are they?

1) Capture, at one or more points, the pressure, velocity, or 3d pressure/velocity of the sound at a given point in the

atmosphere.

2) Store that in a secure, accurate, and easily reproduced and/or

transmitted form.

3) Reproduce/amplify that recorded (set of) pressures, velocities, and such as electrical analogs.


What do we do an “ok” job with?

In a word, loudspeakers. While it’s no doubt that loudspeakersare far and away the weakest link in the array of equipment, they

are still not too bad. They can reproduce most of the dynamicrange, over most of the frequency range, and (if you spend yourmoney wisely) at a level of distortion (in the waveform sense)

that is at least sufferable, if not perfect.

What loudspeakers can’t do, however, is replace what was lostat the original acquisition, or replace what was never extant in

therecording to begin with. Unfortunately, loudspeakers are

very often called upon to do exactly that.


What are we missing?

In a real venue, the soundfield is very complex, and wesample it as we move and turn our heads. The soundfield in any

reverberant performing venue willchange in less than one wavelength at any given frequency.

That is to say, at 1 kHz, 1 foot, give or take, will yield asubstantially different soundfield. In venues with highlydispersive reverberation (which is an ideal), in fact, the

coherence length of a signal may be substantially less thana wavelength under some important and realistic conditions.


In such a diffuse soundfield, there is an enormous amount of analytic information present in the 1 meter

space about one’s head. Speaking purely from an analyticalviewpoint, one would have to spatially sample the soundfieldaccording to the Nyquist criterion, and capture an enormous

number of channels.

For example, one would have to tile an imaginary sphere withmicrophones every .25” or so in order to correctly sample

the surface of such a space at 20kHz. This sort of calculationleads directly to a catastrophic growth of number of

channels and data rate.


What kinds of things will such a hypothetical microphonearray pick up?

1) A set of coherent, plane/spherical waves passing throughthe space. (We will call these the perceptually direct parts

of the soundfield for reasons that will be obvious later.)

2) A set of more or less uncorrelated (beyond the coherencelength at any given frequency) waveforms from each of

the microphones. These mostly uncorrelated microphonescapture the details of the soundfield. (For reasons that

will be obvious later, we will call these diffuse orperceptually indirect parts of the soundfield. The two terms

are not quite synonyms.)


How do our ears work?

And what can we detect in a

natural soundfield?


The Outer EarThe outer ear provides frequency directivity via shadowing,shaping, diffraction, and the like. It is different (by enoughto matter) for different individuals, but can be summarized

by the “Head Related Transfer Functions” (HRTF’s) or “Head Related Impulse Responses”(HRIR’s) mentioned in the

literature, at least on the average or for a given listener.

The HRTF’s or HRIR’s are ways of determining the effect ona sound coming from a given direction to a given ear.

The ear canal inserts a 1 octave or so wide resonance at about1 to 4 kHz depending on the individual.


The Middle EarThe middle ear carries out several functions, the most

important of which, for levels and frequencies thatare normally (or wisely) experienced, is matching the

impedence of the air to the fluid in the cochlea.

There are several other functions related to overloadprotection and such, which are not particularly germane

under comfortable conditions.

The primary effect of the middle ear is to provide a 1-zero

high pass function, with a matching pole at approximately

700Hz or so, depending on the individual.


The Inner Ear

A complicated subject at best, the inner ear can be thought ofas having two membranes, each a travelling wave filter. Between the

two membranes are two sets of hair cells, the inner hair cells,and the outer hair cells. The inner hair cells are primarily

detectors. They fire when the movement of the two membranes are different. The outer hair cells are primarily a system thatcontrols the exact points of the very steep low pass filters and

high pass filters. The outer hair cells can polarize and depolarize,and change both their length and stiffness. This polarization is

how they affect the relative tunings of the two membranes.


Critical Bands and Cochlear Filters

The overall effect of this filter structure is time/frequency analysis of a particular sort, called critical band (Bark

Scale) or effective rectangular bandwidth (ERB) filter functions. Note that this

is not a set of filters, but rather a continuous set of filters,with lower and higher bandwidths varying according to

the center frequency.

Roughly speaking, critical bandwidths are about 100Hz up to700Hz, and 1/3 octave thereafter. ERB’s are usually

a bit narrower, especially at higher frequencies.


A discussion of which is right, and which should be used,is, by itself, well beyond the range of a one-hour seminar.

The basic point that must come out of this discussion is thatthe sound arriving in an ear will be analyzed in somethingapproximating 100Hz bandwidth filters at low frequencies,

and at something like 1/3 octave bandwidths at higherfrequencies, and that the system will detect either thesignal waveform itself (below 500Hz) or the signalenvelope (above 4000 Hz), or a bit of both (in the

range between 500Hz and 4000 Hz). Exactly what isdetected is likewise, by itself, well beyond a one hour

seminar, and furthermore, a consensus is yet to emerge.


Hey, we have two ears, not one.

Now that we know roughly what and how one ear candetect a signal, we can examine what can be picked up by

two ears.

That would be, at low frequencies, the leading edges of thefiltered signal itself, and at high frequencies, the leading edges

of the signal envelopes.

The shapes of the waveform/envelope can also be compared,to some extent, as well as their onsets.


Because we all live with our HRTF’s, that change slowlywhile we are growing, and very little afterwards (hairhas some effect at high frequencies), the brain learns

them, and we take them into account without anyconscious effort.

In short, we know the delay at different frequencies betweenthe two ears, the relative attenuation, and other such

information as part of learning to hear binaurally.

This means that we can do several things.


Detection of Direct (planar) Waves

Since we know the time delay at a given frequency, as wellas the relative attentuations to the two ears as a function offrequency and direction, we can place a direct plane wavesound in direction by understanding at a very low level the

time delays and amplitude attenuations at different frequenciesfor wideband signals with quick onsets. For such signals,

having an idea of what the source “sounds like” is very helpful,as the spectral shaping at either ear can disambiguate thetime-delay information, and provide more easily accessed

elevation and front/back information.


Listening to Diffuse SoundfieldsDiffuse soundfields will not have correlated envelopes at the

two ears in the relevant frequency ranges. The brain interprets suchwaveforms as “surrounding us” or “omnidirectional”. Note that

these waveforms inside a critical bandwidth may or may not haveleading edges. Note that leading edges can sometimes line up

to provide false or confusing directional cues.A perceptually indirect signal (a term applying only above 2kHz

or so) will have a flat envelope, and thereby provide no informationto correlate. In other words, the flat envelopes will in fact

‘correlate’but the auditory system has no features to lock onto to determine

either direction or diffusion. Such signals are often ignored in the most complex stages of hearing, but will have the same

effect of “surround” or “omnidirectional’ when focused upon.


How does this relate to recording and playback?

First, a recording of a plane wave should be reproducedas a plane wave, or as something that the ear’s detection

mechanisms can treat as a plane wave.

Second, diffuse signals should not be recorded at one pointand then reproduced as plane (or spherical) waves, because

the auditory system will detect any “leading edges” in them asfalse directional cues, leading to the classic problem of

being “sucked into” loudspeakers during things like applause, or

in multichannel audio, reverberation from the rear speakers.


3 Front Channels - a good start?

With 3 front channels, and using nearly coincident mikingtechniques, it is possible to create a good illusion of the

front soundfield without having depth or elevation problems.

Aside from avoiding the problem of interference, non-coincident 3-channel miking has other good

effects, specifically a wider listening area, measured by subjective test to be 6 to 8 times the

listening area available in the 2-channel presentation.

BUT – You notice we’re still talking direct sound here!


How about the Back?

Again, empirical research shows that two back channels canprovide a good sense of reverberation and depth to the rear

of the listener.

The same two channels can create, if they are at the side of thelistener, a good sense of side to side envelopment.

You can’t have both at once, unless you have 4 more channels,of course.

So much for 5.1, then?


No, so much for 5.0The usual 5.1 home theatre setup, meaning 5 high-frequencyradiators, and one subwoofer radiating below 90Hz or so, has

additional problems beyond the 5.0 problem.

Specifically, although one can not LOCALIZE signals belowabout 90 Hz, one can detect spatial effects from interaural

phase differences down to about 40Hz.

The AT&T Labs “Perceptual Soundfield Reconstruction”Demo, no longer available, contained a very nice example of these

effects, and how they can change “boomy bass” in the2-radiator case into “bass spread about a room” in the

5-channel case.

(And you notice we’re still talking mostly about direct signals.)


Ok, what about Indirect Signals?Well, as mentioned long ago, indirect signals with envelopes

that have peaks or “leading edges” can create false cuesif reproduced by a direct radiator.

What does this mean?

That’s a good question. What I think it means is that agood recording and playback setup will have both direct

and indirect radiation capability in each loudspeaker,and that the two will be driven with appropriate signals

Alternative, interference between speakers in well-recorded multichannel recordings can break up direct-sound patterns.


What Can Be Done?

Except for a few parts of the space (Gerzon’s Soundfield Microphone,

various widely separated miking methods, the Neural Mike Array and AT&T Labs (Johnston/Lam AES Preprint) Perceptual

Soundfield Reconstruction), recording methods have not been systematically

or carefully examined, and the results of many promisingmiking and simulation methods are simply unknown.

Effectively, the field is just now becoming feasible.


A variety of tutorials can be found at:www.aes.org/sections/pnw

Look at the “slide deck”” tab.

http://www.aes.org/sections/pnw

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